To W hom It May Concern:

I am Montie Brewer, I was the CEO of Air Canada from 2005 until 2009

. I am writing to voice my support for IATA’s NDC Initiative and Resolution 787, for reasons elaborated below.
During my time at Air Canada, we transformed our approach to pricing. Wh en I first arrived, like many other airlines, we were using high powered computers and sophisticated algorithms to determine when best to increase the selling fare to maximize the amo unt of revenue we could extract from the marketplace . This approach, though successful in the short term, in the long term it tended to commoditize the product.
Our customers had differing needs and we were only offering one price regardless of their ne eds. W e decided to create a transparent marketplace and offer our customers many differe nt products, at differing price levels and let the customer decide which product best met their needs. Instead of offering on e selling fare for a seat , we offered four different products

, available all the time up
, to the last seat on the aircraft.
Each product had different restrictions and benefits. The lowest priced product was a Spartan offering, with no refund allowed, no frequent flyer points, no food, no s eat assignment and so on. The highest priced product offered everything, food, seat assignment, refunds and so on. The products offered our customers different travel experiences even though they used the same seat on the aircraft.
Our objective was to have two customers sitting next to each other on a flight and they compare the price they paid, and they are both happy. The customer who paid the higher fare could have purchased the lower fare, but the customer saw value in the higher priced product.
In addition to our new “Branded Fares”, we also allowed the customer to add benefits to the fare product they purchased on an a la carte basis. This includ ed paying for a seat assignment, travel insurance , lounge access and so on . The goal was to offer the customer lots of options and let them choose the best mix that met their needs.
To make this all work, we needed to make sure that the customer could see all the products, and their prices, when they were shopping for a flight. Weneeded a transparent marketplace. Wewere able to create this on the Air Canada website. Once a customer requested a flight they were offered all flight and product options displayed in a grid. This grid display has become common place on most airl ine websites today
, but was a consumer
- centric breakthrough back in 200 3
, ten years ago. The pricing change was a great success for Air Canada resulting in improvements in customer satisfaction and revenue. Over 4 0 % of our customers were **choosing** ahigher priced product and over 25% of the customers were **adding** an a l a carte item to

their purchase. They were doing so because they saw value in the differentiated products. Many of these products could only be found at the Air Canada website

. The big gest obstacle to the change in how we wanted sell our products were with our distribution partners , primarily the GDSs. Airlines have historically only focused on offering one fare for a seat at a time. The age old question, “ what is the price to go to Orlando on Monday ? ” Distribution systems were designed to answer that question. They weren’t designed to answer the new questions the Air Canada customers were asking, “W

hat travel options do I have to go to Orlando on Monday?” and “How can I easily customize my trip to my liking?”. It was critical for Air Canada customers to see all options at once, enabling them to find and select the product that best met their travel needs. However, there was a lot of friction with the distribution partners. They did not want to invest in changes to their systems to allow for display changes and a la carte purchases, and Air Canada was unwilling to distribute the new travel options through their systems unless they made the necessary ch anges. It was a stalemate, and the customer suffered for it. Consumers were not able to easily compare the products that Air Canada was offering with the other travel options offered by other airlines in the distribution systems used by most travel agents. The customer could do comparison shopping by going from website to website, and that is what they did.
The optimal solution for the agent, customer and the Airline was to have a transparent marketplace that aggregates **all** products and educates the cu stomer on the value of each product offered. In other industries there are very successful aggregation sites, Amazon for retail, Zillow for real estate, and Zappos for shoes. These sites not only offer different products, but they also educate the custom er on the value of the differences between one product and another. Wh y hasn’t this happened in the air travel space? Sure, t here are sites that aggregate travel options, like Expedia, but they are set up to answer the “what is the price to go to Orlando on Monday?” question. They don’t show all products and options available for the traveler.

The customer and their agents are looking for a marketplace that aggregates all travel options and products, and airlines are looking for a marketplace where the customers can appreciate the value of the many different products they are offering for the same journey. They all want the same thing. This is an opportunity that a current distributor or a new distributor can take advantage of. It has been over ten years since this need has been established. Wh y has no one done it?
That is the question I have often asked myself. The re is an opportunity in creating a new, very dynamic marketplace for travel that would make travel shopping a more 3D experience than the one dimensional experience it is today. For anyone to build such amarketplace where customers would like to shop, they have to have enough products to

be interesting to the customer. Ideally they would have all products from all airlines.
Having looked at this, there are a number of barriers that have slowed established distributors from doing this and have limited the abi lity of startups from entering the space. One being a ccess to all of the airline's fares, seat availability, and the full array of product offerings . Another barrier is the need to standardize the data from the different airline systems.
For these reasons, current distributors have been trying to get airlines to adopt new standards so they can more easily rework their systems to distribute the new products.

For the startup, they have a number of options to gain access to airline products, fares and availability. The first option is they could contract with a current aggregator, like one of the GDS’s. The drawback here is that the GDS’s do not, cannot , distribute all of the products that airlines offer that customers may find interesting. T his includes a la carte options, some bundled fares and airline pass products that some airlines offer. Another drawback is
, if the start up is successful, they could be seen as a competitor to the GDS.
Another option to gain access to all the airline’s products
, fares and availability is to build a link directly to each airline ’ s reservation system. No simple task. Many investors see the opportunity in investing in companies that are interested in building a better marketplace and tools for agents. But they do not have the patience to wait out the amount of time it takes to get access to all the airline content. In practical terms, t his is effectively a barrier of entry.
I applaud IATA’s NDC initiative. IATA’s newly proposed airline connectivity standard will potentially take away that time consuming process , eliminating one of the barriers of entry into this space. It will be easier for everyone, current distributors and new entrants, to gain access to the airline’s fares , products and availability and th e data and connectivity will be standardized which will make it easier to aggregate multiple airline content . It will allow airlines to continue to produce new innovative products for the marketplace with the comfort that they will be distributed and presented in manner that will highlight their product's benefits to the consumer.

There has been a call for standardization for some time for the reasons stated above. It is a necessary step in allowing the industry to evolve to meet the changing needs of the traveling public. It should be approved to allow innovation to be brought to the marketplace.